“A musician’s identity is closely tied to his art” – Sternbach (1995)
Music is a tough career to devote your life to, not only because of the number of hours and dedication that it takes, but of the number of problems and issues that we often suffer throughout our professional life. In their research, Dews and Williams (1989) revealed issues of concern for 201 music students of different institutions of the United States, both undergraduate and graduate. They mention that students suffered stress, performance anxiety, burnout with musical progress, conflict between personal and professional life, and depression. Sternbach (1995) states that stress and stress related illnesses and injuries are pandemic among professional musicians today, and these problems have gone virtually unnoticed and untreated. In spite of some interventions in conservatoires and orchestras in the last 20 years, this is still largely true.
As he states, people many times get surprised when we associate the term “occupational stress” with the musician profession, because musicians often get associated with a happy life, due to working in careers that are self-elected, having a strong relationship with the music they perform and having opportunities to express themselves, but this terms do not always relate to all musicians. He highlights three main elements that contribute to high levels of stress amongst most musicians:
- Stage fright or anxiety.
- Constant scrutiny and criticism of conductors and band leaders.
- Expectation to produce virtually note-perfect performances.
This last one is the cause of many musicians loosing motivation and focus, and their impatience and burnout with musical progress, as mentioned before with Dews and Williams (1989).
As stated at the beginning of the chapter, A musician’s identity is closely tied to his art. This is a commonly known thing, because every artist knows that their artistic expression comes through their experiences in life and how they learned from them, and we try to do our best to express these experiences or feelings in this art. But this comes with a big downside, which is that when an artist is injured, unable to perform or simply dissatisfied with the art that he /she produces, it can cause an identity loss, with a consequent list of mental health problems.
This leads to a need for every musician to be mentally strong and prepared, and to have a set of tools and routines that they can use to cope with these tough situations. Some of these tools are Mindfulness, Applied Relaxation, Imagery, and a well-organized study routine. This set of tools will grant us a good and open mental state, with the correct growth mindset that any good musician needs, good self and body awareness, and a deep, tension-free, and organized study method. I have found these techniques throughout the course of my studies in different conservatories and countries, and they have helped me through hard moments. Whenever I couldn’t find a way to focus properly, I would do Applied Relaxation and Mindfulness exercises, and they would shut down the noise inside my head and allow me to focus. Whenever I encountered a technical passage in which I was unable to obtain consistency, practicing it mentally with Imagery helped me through.
This is the main reason why I started the journey of looking more closely at these elements and creating a mental practice routine, so musicians would finally see the benefits of being mentally prepared and how time saving and efficient it can be.
To achieve this, in this research we will try to answer the following research question: Can we improve a musician's performance by adding mental practice and body awareness exercises to his daily routine?
